Well-known Member

Ok not a noob on this but im havin a real ass of a job setting this set up right,

first i use avia to set white level with the pulse needles in the white area so that they are both just visible which with my PJ is set at 47 contrast level.

then i set brightness which according to avia falls around 65 brightness on the pluge pattern. I then check back with contrast and at 47 both bars are still just visible.
I then sit and watch a movie and to me the pic is washed out(dvd player is set to 0ire) but whites are not blooming.
i check with DVE just to make sure my avia set up is right and it falls about the same, well its not worth changing anyhow. i find if i back brightness down to around 55 (thus loosing my avia calibration) the pic looks excellent with real good colour saturation(although with a green bias when colour temp is set to medium) but if i watch a dark film like blade i cant see much but going back to 65 brightness allows more shadow detail but at the expense of vibrance and pic quality yet this is calibrated with avia etc.

Whats even more strange is before i did the firmware software upgrade i could get this set spot on with a pic that was both sharp and pleasing but after the software upgrade to the PJ im finding it very hard to get things right.
Perhaps it needs a pro calibration as i guess doing the software upgrade would mean i have lost my dealer or factory calibration or somthing but i just cant get the image to the quality to how i know it should be.

Well-known Member

What gamma settings are you using? Gamma is lumenocity against IRE IIRC so you may have it set too high. Try a lower setting and you should get back the darker look you want. Recheck your brightness and contrast afterwards though.

Well-known Member

Gamma is set at 2 i think and i have never changed the gamma setting since delivery.

Avia calibration is set for 480p and movies are been played back at 480p

I exspect if i used a pal disc that the setting might need a change. out of interest i dont seem to be able to set brightness and contrast as two different calibrations for PAL and NTSC. the one setting does both as far as i can see or am i supposed to use the mem settings as the sim2 does not seem to auto detect settigs for PAL and NTSC

Well-known Member

yes dvd player has changed hence why i was recalibrating. its just that avia and DVE both set brightness at 65 at this point the test patterns look fine but when a dark dvd is viewed it has good detail but black level is washed out and colour looks a tad washed as well. (DVE is a pal version yet setting come out almost identical to avia)

Contrast seems to stay a constant 47.

Another question, is it right for brightness to be set above contrast as quite a few peeps ive seen posting there settings seem to have contrast higher than brightness, but for me this results in white level threshold

Well-known Member

THe player may have a different gamma output to your old one, and I would think that if the brightness and contrast are set OK (and it sounds like they are), then I would suspect the player.

I'm not sure how your controls relate, but I would think they are working OK. If the pj was fine before you started using the new player, then I would try another player, as this one seems to be causing the problems.

Well-known Member

not as far as i remember, at new brightness used to fall at 49 and this was both with the pio868 and denon 3910. and calibrated with avia\DVE. The only varible i have changed is the software upgrade to the projector so maybe its this that has change the service menu items, as im sure sim2 calibrate the Pjs before they ship them.
might just need to get it ISF`ed

Active Member

Using a PC you will be dependent on the settings in the software player so the settings will probably be very different to a DVD player.

I have noticed on some DLP projectors the abberation that Gary mentioned when using an analogue source which goes away when using HDMI or DVI so I guess it's happening in the D to A in the DVD player or A to D in the projector.

Here's a great way of setting the black level as you are actually using the source material. Have two 2.35 movies to hand, one PAL and one NTSC.
Play the PAL one and go right up to the screen with your remote control and look at the 2.35 black bars.
Raise the brightness setting until you see some "noise" in the black then back it off until it just disappears. Even one point of brightness will make the noise appear/disappear.That will be the correct setting for that particular disc. Make a note of the setting.
Try it with the NTSC disc and see if the brightness value has changed.

Distinguished MemberAVForums Sponsor

Just to point out to some readers that Jeffs method will not work with older DLP's as they always have dither visible in dark areas and it might be hard with some to distinguish when more is getting added to the noise that is already present. For current lot it's a good way to do disc dependant brightness.

Well-known Member

I guess i was supposed to set brightness so the dithering or black noise just disappeared. I did notice that if i set brightness very low the noise was very noticeable. once i hit 51 it vanished, at 50 it reappeared. if i slowly increased past 51 brightness it reappeared again until i got to a point where the brightness was way to high and the black noise became unnoticeable again and the 2:35 black border was way grey.( i realize this is not quite how jeff said tio do it but i could see noise in the black from about 20 all the way to 50 where it just vanished. I thought there would be no noise at the lower value until i got to high and noise appeared but it didnt realy happen like that. I did try a few different discs both NTSC and PAL and the same thing pretty much happened)
i take it the lower value of 51 was correct, Pic was again very good.
i checked with avia NTSC and DVE PAL and both claim brightness at this point was too low. i guess i`ll just have to go by what my eye likes, which after trying a few discs 51 seems about right.

So thanks for the advice, i appreciate the time you gentlemen give on these forums,its so helpful. Cheers